USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 1 > Part 35
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The role of the women in these years and for many years to come was a combination of hard outdoor labor and the domestic arts of the household. The earliest cooking was crude, largely a matter of such food as was available. There were at first no ovens
17Eaton, Annals of Warren, 2nd ed., p. 155.
18Owned a number of years ago by Mrs. Martha Eugley.
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
and the preparation of meals was by the varied uses of an open fire. With the new and larger cabins in this decade, ovens were ad- joined to the fireplaces and cooking was expanded to include the dishes prized by the German in his ancestral home. Fire came from the tinderbox with flint, from the sunglass, and from the flash of powder in highly combustible material. In some cases coals were borrowed from neighbors, but in a thrifty household there was always fire, for at night the burning log could be carefully cov- ered with ashes and the embers thus preserved for the coming
HUIT
A Broad Bay Home of the 1760's
After sketch m. old Land Claim
morning. Before the end of the decade, the menu of a well-ordered German home at Broad Bay began to include such old familiar dishes as potato soup and meal soup, sauerkraut and fat pork, dried apples and doughbuttons, filled pig stomach and sauce, scrapple, sausage and liver pudding, apple fritters and funnel cakes, fat cakes and Shrovetide cakes, dried apples and sugar cakes, gingerbread and rusks, vinegar punch, and homemade wines and beer.19 Roasted barley was widely used as a more nutritious substitute for coffee, and in addition there were the more local dishes whose use had grown out of the necessities of the strenuous days.
1ºF. J. F. Schantz, The Domestic Life and Characteristics of the Pennsylvania Ger- man Pioneer, The Penn. German Soc. Pub., Vol. X.
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The early bread was made of rye flour and was of three kinds known as Schwarzbrot (black bread), Kümmelbrot (bread with caraway seeds), and Pumpernickel (Westphalian rye bread). The latter was the favorite and it was thought to be the most strength- ening. It was made of unbolted rye flour into loaves weighing up to fifty pounds. The dough for such bread was set without yeast or leaven and then baked in the oven from ten to fourteen hours. The finished loaves were very dark and heavy and encased in a hard, thick crust; with persons whose teeth were well whetted and whose stomachs were staunch, the constant use of this bread proved an invigorating experience. Then, too, there was a further merit, for a baking could last a family from two to three weeks. All food was prepared by the women of the household; and with the crude modes of baking and cooking in use, it was a long and toilsome task. The daughter's share in this work was a preparation for her own future married life, and often she would serve an apprenticeship with another family in more affluent circumstances, where she could acquire additional skill in the art of good cooking. Such a practice was too common and too well thought of to be looked upon as a disgrace.
In an isolated social unit such as Broad Bay, compelled to seek an economic self-sufficiency, men skilled in trades were indispen- sable factors. Fortunately there were a goodly number of such hands in the community, skilled in the basic services. These in- cluded the carpenters, Georg Hahn, David Rominger, Michael Rominger, John Kinsell, and David Holzapfel; Peter Kroehn, the cooper; Georg Reid, the wagoner; John Adam Löwen-Zöllner and Georg Storer, tailors; Paul Kuhn and Andrew Schenck, tanners; Hans Peter Gross and Willibaldus Kastner, blacksmiths, and Peter Light, the wheelwright. The two essential trades lacking were cob- blers who could fabricate the available skins into footwear, and weavers able to make the finer heavier materials used in outside garments. So far as the records afford light on this need, there was not a single cobbler in the colony and only one weaver. This was Matthias Hoffses, an artisan of such rare skill that the story was long told at family reunions that he once wove a tablecloth which at a little distance looked exactly like a table fully set with dishes and smoking food.20 The loom of one weaver, however, could cover only a small fraction of the bare bodies at Broad Bay. Georg Soelle frequently deplored this basic lack and in one of his letters to Seidel observed: "A brother [Moravian lay preacher] would get along very well here, were he a shoemaker or a weaver."21
As things were, the burden of weaving the material for cloth- ing, coverings, blankets, and household material fell in a large
20Oral narrative by Geo. W. Singer of Damariscotta, descendant of Matthias Hoffses. 21Letter, Soelle to Seidel, April 2, 1764, Morav. Archives (Bethlehem, Pa.).
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measure on the women, and it was a most laborious task. The men, to be sure, could plant the flax, but it was after that, that the real work began. After the plants had reached their maturity, they were pulled up by the roots and thoroughly dried in the sun or by fires. Then the seed bolls had to be removed by passing the stalks through a heavy comb. They were next tied together, im- mersed in water and allowed to soften and rot, and after a second drying they were threshed in the cumbersome flax break. The next step was to separate the woody fiber from the flax - the scutching process so called - through the use of a knife on the swingling block. Then came the processing with the hatchel in which the coarse and refuse parts of the flax were separated from the fine and fibrous threads by the teeth of the hatchel. These in turn were placed on a clockreel and spun into long even threads. There then followed the bleaching, settling, rinsing, and final dry- ing. The material was then ready for the weaver.
The proper preparation of wool was not such a long and detailed task, but skillful spinning could only follow long and ardu- ous practice. The spinner, holding in the left hand the roll of carded wool, wound with the right hand the end fibers on the point of the spindle, started the wheel, and quickly moved back three steps, holding up the long yarn. At the proper time she would advance as the yarn wound on the spindle. This procedure continued well- nigh endlessly, the spinner standing long hours at the wheel or un- til the yarn was all spun. The dirt and grease were then removed by fulling and the texture made more compact by the moistening involved in this process. After these long preliminaries, the flax and wool were ready for the loom. This was an entirely new proc- ess and there was much teaching and learning among the women of Broad Bay before this essential art was generally practiced in the houses, and the numerous children could cover their nakedness from the stinging realities of a Maine winter.
While the supply of wool in the colony was still limited, as it was in the early 1760's, the web was often the product of flax and the woof of wool. This product was known as linsey-woolsey, and it became the staple material of wearing apparel at Broad Bay for many years. Some of the Germans wore their linsey-woolsey trousers through the winter, and most of them at other seasons wore them to church without shoes or stockings.22 The styles were those of old Germany. Fashions were nonexistent for many years. When cloth was once fabricated into a garment, it was worn un- til it was fit for nothing but rags. This was, in short, a decade in which concern was not so much with food as with cloth in order to protect human nakedness.
22Eaton, Annals of Warren, 2nd ed., p. 151.
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Shoes were a greater luxury than clothing at Broad Bay and not so generally worn. In summer they were used only on special occasions such as Sunday worship, when they were carried in the hands by churchgoers until the vicinity of the church was reached. There it was the practice to sit down by the wayside, put them on, and go to church. When out of sight of the church, they were removed and the journey home ended barefoot. This practice con- tinued well down into the nineteenth century. I recall my own father and older neighbors relating times of their childhood when this practice was generally followed.23 It unquestionably had its origin in days when shoes were scarce, and was continued as a phase of New England thrift. And shoes were scarce in Old Broad Bay because of the long hours of labor that went into the fabrica- tion of even a single pair. There was ample material, but since there was no cobbler in the settlement, people were forced to de- pend on the cobblers from adjacent towns for such shoes as they could afford.
Such artisans made periodic visits at Broad Bay. There were many families who made their own cobblers' benches, while others would borrow, and the cobbler would come and live with a family until he had shod all who were in need of footwear, or had made as many pairs as a family could afford. The leather came from the skins of the moose and deer, or from the cattle killed for food. They were cured by local tanners in vats of hemlock-bark soup, but often the farmer tanned his own leather. The linen thread used was homespun from home-grown flax. The cobblers' wax was made from pitch or resin and from beef and mutton tallow.
In winter the work bench would be placed by the kitchen fireplace and the craftsman would don his leather apron, measure the feet requiring shoes, and beat the soaked leather with a broad- faced hammer upon his lap until it was pliable. Then he would cut out from patterns the required pieces, which had to be laid upon a board and pared or skived with a sharp knife until of the required thickness. A wooden vise or clamp was used for holding the pieces while they were being sewed together. Holes were punched in the leather with an awl, and seams were sewed with the sticky waxed linen thread, led and guided through the holes by hog bristles.
The loosely-spun thread used in sewing shoes was so strong that it was hard to break it by a direct pull. With his hands the cobbler would unroll it upon his knee until the strands became untwisted and would part with a gentle pull, leaving long, silky fibers extending to a very fine point. After a thorough waxing, this hairlike point was rolled around the middle of a stiff bristle until it led to the full body of the thread which now terminated in
23Oral narrative, Capt. Albion F. Stahl and Mrs. Emma Johnston.
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a bristle-pointed end. When both ends of the thread were thus prepared, the bristle points were both inserted in each hole at once and from opposite sides. They were drawn carefully through and the thread drawn tight with both hands to form a double stitch. In detail such were the operations required to shoe a family, and they render it amply clear why footwear was treasured and why both old and young at Broad Bay travelled barefoot when and where possible.
The fondness of the German for domestic animals and the pride he took in his stock have been mentioned as a tradition of long standing. This feeling extended to the cat and the dog, both of which served a highly useful purpose in his domestic economy. With the poison baits and the traps of the modern day unknown, and with his bins full of the autumn harvest of barley, corn, and rye, cats were the farmer's major protection against the inroads of rats and mice on his food supply. Everything at Broad Bay in this early day worked for a living; cats were no exception to this rule, and they were fully as numerous as the farmer's children. Dogs were just as useful. Bears, wildcats, and wolves were still plentiful, and the dog served his purpose well by warding off their attacks and passing on the word by night to his master when such destruc- tive pests were prowling about the sheepfold or the pigsty. Swine were the earliest of the domestic animals in the colony, probably because they were a favorite food staple with the German, and more important, because in the earliest days they were able to forage for themselves through the spring and summer and to fat- ten on the rich supplies of acorns in the autumn. Butchering days were always important in the life of the pioneer, for they provided an occasion when a few related or neighboring families would get together and assist one another in slaughtering, dressing, cutting up, smoking, and preparing the winter's supply of pork.
The Broad Bay barnyard was a noisy and colorful place. Apart from hens there were ducks and geese, prized because of their ability to fend for themselves, to add variety to the farmer's diet, and best of all to provide great quantities of feathers and down for filling the feather beds under which the German and his chil- dren could sleep warm during the coldest nights of winter.24 In this active and varied barnyard life, the peacock held the place of honor. He was the farmer's pet and pride, largely perhaps because his beauty and brilliance provided the owner a mode through which to compensate for the daily drabness of his own existence. Peacocks as farmyard birds survived despite their uselessness down into my lifetime. The last peacock in Waldoboro was owned
24This is an old German practice still in use in modern times. I used such a cover- ing during my student days in Germany and can attest the fact that in lightness and warmth it cannot be surpassed.
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by Moses Burkett and was one of the wonders of my boyhood days.
It has been pointed out that families were large in Old Broad Bay and that once established they were freely fed from the farm and the abundance of the forest and the shore. In general people enjoyed robust health except for the contagious diseases which would run through families like fire through dry grass. Of these maladies tuberculosis was the most dreaded scourge. Crude folk remedies were powerless to cope with it, and in consequence it was invariably deadly. As scant as the records are in such matters, it is clear that among its many victims were John Friedrick Kinsell, Melchior Schneider, John Michael Sides and Eva Williard.25 Such medicines as they possessed were derived from the oils of the barn- yard and herbs from field, pasture, and woodland.
Among the Germans, schoolmasters were held in veneration next to the pastor, and from the earliest times Broad Bay had an impressive number of those representing this profession, although during the hectic years of Indian warfare their functions were only sporadically discharged. In the face of such conditions, parents taught and assisted their children in their groping efforts to se- cure a smattering of learning. In the long winter evenings the fam- ily table was ofttimes the school, where the children in some cases were given a bit of reading, writing, numbers, and religious in- struction. The catechism was taught by the head of the family, and hymns and passages of Scripture were learned.
Infant baptism was a prized and indispensable rite.26 Sin, punishment, heaven, hell, and eternal glory were vivid realities. The rod was also used as an instrument of education and religious training, and best of all, there was basic virtue induced through the discipline of regular and responsible toil. Children were taught early in life to work; boys and girls had their daily duty. Farm labor or a trade, usually both, were learned by all the boys, and the girls were thoroughly schooled in all the manifold duties of a complex domestic life. Family control was thoroughly patriarchal. The son was paid nothing for his work at home; and every penny he earned outside up to the age of twenty-one might be taken by the father: but once the son had reached his maturity, it was com- mon practice for the father to establish him on a farm, help him build his cabins, and equip him with the livestock to make his start. This social practice is clearly illustrated by the case of my great- grandfather, Captain John Stahl, who acquired land on Dutch Neck and settled his sons, Aaron, David, John, and Silas on their own farms.
25 Family Memoirs, Morav. Archives (Winston-Salem, N. C.).
26 Jasper J. Stahl, "Diary of a Moravian Missionary at Broad Bay in 1760," N. E. Quarterly, Dec., 1939.
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The care of the aged had the force of a religious rite, even though such social morality was economic in its origins, for every German felt that if he lived long enough he would find himself in his old age in a condition of helplessness and poverty. Hence he aimed to do as he hoped to be done by. After a day of toil, it was held a privilege, as well as a duty, to visit, sit with, and cheer the aged and infirm. Hospitality was marked, since need and suffering makes all men near of kin. Strangers were welcomed, and unex- pected visitors were never turned away from even the humblest household. Gott lobet euch für eure Freundlichkeit was a formula in common use.
In the social life of Broad Bay infant baptisms, marriages, and funerals were occasions for special observances. Death especially brought many ancient customs into play. As soon as it occurred the windows were opened in order that the soul of the deceased might be released for its flight to the skies.27 The body was care- fully prepared for burial and in season was frequently laid on a strip of grass sod, as this was supposed to slow the processes of decomposition. Still in vogue in my boyhood were watchers each night in the house of mourning. In a small place such as Broad Bay invitations to the funeral were quite general. There was first a short service in the home consisting of a hymn, a short address, and a prayer. The plain wooden coffin was then placed on the shoulders of the bearers, or on a wagon or sled, and a procession made up of all the relatives, friends, and neighbors accompanied the body to God's acre or to the place of burial. Here the top was removed from the coffin, and the "remains viewed" for the last time. The committal service was then spoken by the pastor, and the coffin placed in the grave. Thereafter the company would re- pair to the church or a barn, depending on the location of the grave, and a long funeral sermon would be delivered based on a text sometimes selected by the deceased long before death.28 After this service the mourners and friends would betake themselves to the residence of the deceased where a bountiful funeral feast was held in memory of the departed.
The early weddings at Broad Bay were more circumstantial even then the funerals. In the period here under discussion, they frequently lasted a week, but by the end of the century they were limited to three or four days, and in subsequent years grew pro- gressively briefer. Traces of old bridal customs at Broad Bay are to be found in - strangest of all places - the records of the Bu- reau of Pensions in Washington. From these records many of the early Germans speak to us again in their own words across a wide
27I recall this belief as having been related to me in childhood.
28 At a "Pennsylvania Dutch" burial service I listened to a two-hour sermon.
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bridge of time and inadvertently touch on the marriage customs of their day.
Mary Clouse, aged seventy-six speaks:
I was present and saw the marriage of George Michael Achorn by the Rev. Dr. Schaeffer at his house in Waldoboro - I remember Mr. John Prock and Mrs. Dalheim, now living in Waldoboro, were also present and saw the marriage. Mrs. Catherine Creamer was also at the wedding, but whether she went to Mr. Schaeffer's house and saw the marriage I am not certain. The party assembled at Mrs. Achorn's father's house and then went together to Mr. Schaeffer's where the marriage took place. They afterwards returned to Mr. Schmause's.29
John Prock, aged seventy-nine, speaks:
I remember that it was in January and when I was about eighteen or nineteen years old. We were near neighbors and I was present and saw the marriage. I well remember the festival and many incidents con- nected with it.30
Conrad Heyer speaks in reference to the wedding of Jacob Bornheimer and Mary Hoffses:
I, Conrad Heyer of Waldoboro, - of the age of one hundred and four years, - was present when Jacob Bornheimer was married to Mary Hoffses at Waldoboro, in the year seventeen hundred and eighty-seven - by a minister by the name of Croner, who was a German preacher of the gospel. I well recollect many of the circumstances con- nected with the wedding. It lasted four days, which was not unusual in those times.31
Jacob Ludwig, Jr., speaks:
I, Jacob Ludwig of Waldoboro, of the age of seventy-seven years, was present at the marriage. They were married by Frederick Croner, a German Minister of the Gospel. I was eleven years of age and well recollect the marriage which was in the fall of the year. The fact that the wedding lasted some three or four days (as was the custom in those days) fixed the fact pretty strongly in my memory. - The wed- ding of said Jacob Bornheimer and said Mary was the last wedding, that I attended, which lasted four days.32
These depositions cover the efforts of the widows of old Revolutionary soldiers to secure pensions. Their main difficulty lay in successfully establishing the fact that they were ever mar- ried. This was due to failure to keep such records during the Rev- olutionary period and also to the fact that "records for the period between 1773 and 1794 are much torn, defaced and the principal part of them lost and destroyed."33 In these testimonies a clear
29 Pension No. W. 23394, Bureau of Pensions, Wash., D. C.
30 Ibid.
31Pension No. W. 3501, Bur. of Pensions.
32 I bid.
33Sworn affidavit of Isaac G. Reed, Dec. 11, 1838, Pension No. 23394, Bur. of Pen- sions.
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distinction is drawn between the term marriage - the rite per- formed by the minister - and the term wedding, a period of a week filled with a wide variety of quaint festivals and ancient folk- ways. The bridal couple not only reigned for a week, but they were also the objects of endless pranks. Honor was done them by all the arts of cookery - the fattest calves or lambs and tenderest chickens, homemade wines, milk, butter, honey, and the finest breads were theirs, spread forth in an abundance revealing and befitting the social status of the parents. During this time the cou- ple was attended by eight "waiters," four pretty girls and four comely young men, if such were available. These served at the wedding feasts and guarded the bride's slipper, which was a focal point of intrigue, for if the slipper was stolen the bride could not dance until it was restored. The slipper, in fact, provided much of the mystery and merriment on such an occasion, serving as an object of plot, counterplot, cunning concealments, and endless and valiant quests. As in modern times the lavishness and detail of such celebrations varied with parental affluence.
What may be called the normal and usual social life at Broad Bay had its root in practical motives based upon the principle of mutual aid - the erection of buildings, the raising of barns, wood- chopping bees, cornhusking, butchering days, rag-carpet and quilt- ing parties - all occasions when people gathered to aid one an- other. Such gatherings were major social events that ended in feasts at which the best in food and drink were freely furnished. On such days those present heard the small talk of weeks and months of doings in the more remote parts of the settlement as well as the news of the outer world. To these occasions must be added the old folk festivals as observed in the fatherland, such as Hallowe'en with its old folk customs - the ticktacks on the windows, the knocking at doors and then disappearing, the lifting of gates, and the lofting of carts and wagons. The parade of the mummers or horribles on May Day was still observed by the children in my youth. The returning of a wedded couple to their home after the ceremony was celebrated by a serenade of the neighboring folk, and the din ceased only when all were invited in to a treat. This practice, too, so common a half century ago, seems now to have passed into the limbo of things forgotten. Christmas was a more intimate family festival and was observed in these early days ac- cording to the pattern practiced in the old homes across the seas.
By way of contrast with present-day attitudes, mention should be made of the rigid ethical principles which character- ized their simple pioneer life. Honesty was the order of things in all dealings. A promise was a solemn obligation to which God was a witness, and honor was accorded a man whose word was as good
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as his bond. Debt while offtimes necessary was generally feared and the Broad Bayer would spare himself nothing to discharge his obligations. Failure to do this even in the most minor matters was inevitably punished by imprisonment and the seizure of enough property to cover the debt due.
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